For a City to Shine upon a Hill, Somebody Must Turn on the Lights:

Charles Bow reflects on the nature of American exceptional-ism, the myth that somehow the U.S. is superior to all other nations, due to God's grace. (See The New York Times' op-ed.)

Bow believes that if we want to be exceptional we have to earn it. That wasn't quite true following the end of World War II, when we became exceptional because all the other developed countries that competed with us had been devastated by the world war, and we were the world's banker.